Around May 2, 1866

Onward the brigade marched, through the murderous fire pouring down from the ridge. These men were tried and tested through the forge of combat and had developed camaraderie and a sense of pride. These men were the soldiers of Gregg's Brigade.

The History of a Brigade of South Carolinians, known first as "Gregg's" and subsequently as "McGowan's brigade", written...

The Civil War was over, and it was time for those who led the South to be punished. The Norfolk Virginian reported on Monday, December 25, 1865, that the Union arrested "Raphael Semmes, late Admiral in the Confederate navy, and commander of the celebrated cruiser Alabama," with "a profound feeling of shame." The people of the South lamented the "unexpected arrest and immediate transfer...

Midnight train rides, cleaning wounds and changing dressing was not the job for a proper Southern woman. Kate Cummings took up the call to become and nurse and broke the holds that Southern society placed on women of middle to upper class. Kate travled by train from her home in Mobile to different hospitals around the South assesting surgeons after the Battle of Shiloh and hepling wounded in Georgia....

In 1865, shortly after the Civil War had ended, freedmen from Wilkes County, Georgia formed the Dougherty County Equal Rights Association (ERA). Members of the ERA felt that the Freedmen's Bureau, though helpful, could not meet all their needs, and therefore set out for themselves to secure political equality and education for blacks. Secrecy was an important part of the ERA's operation....

The C.S.S. Shenandoah could be called the most dedicated Confederate Naval vessel of the Civil War or the tardiest. A lack of communication and the desire to see the South win the war led this ship to firing the war’s last shots. The C.S.S. Shenandoah was the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe, on a mission to sink or capture any Union vessel it met. The...

The people of Norfolk were worried. According to the Norfolk Virginian, the Board of Health expected Asiatic cholera to spread to North America soon. The United States had seen cholera before. In 1832, it spread through New York and parts of Canada. It killed over ten thousand in New York, New Orleans, and St. Louis in 1849. Several thousands more were lost in Chicago in the 1850s....

A small article on the front page of The Natchez Democrat on December 11, 1865, described a conflict between state militia and black freedmen almost two weeks earlier. The incident occurred as the militia attempted to search for arms in the black community Grenada, Mississippi. The militia seized "a large number of muskets, ammunition…from the negroes."

At the close of the Civil War, wealthy northerners were interested in acquiring new farmland to develop. To do so, they needed to relocate to areas that were less populated than the North. Despite their admiration for South Carolina’s “lands and climate,” northerners feared living in the state, because of the potential violence. During this time, South Carolina began enacting black codes to...

Throughout the years of our countries existence, the United States Constitution has had many Amendments added to it. One of the most important and influential of these amendments has to be the 13th amendment. This amendment states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United...

The nineteenth century was an era in which people constantly feared the outbreak of epidemic diseases, especially cholera. An epidemic of cholera was already raging in Europe in the fall of 1865, and as had occurred in 1832 and 1849, it seemed inevitable that the disease would cross the Atlantic and ravage the United States. New York saw the arrival of the cholera on April 18th, 1866 on the steamship...